Notes: Pirates considering moving Andrew McCutchen up in order, Meadows has surgery

A few notes, culled mostly from a day working at MLBTR:

-P- ESPN's Jayson Stark writes about the Pirates considering moving Andrew McCutchen to the No. 2 spot. I've never been one to worry much about lineups, because who's playing is a lot more important than what the order that determines when they hit. That written, I'm all for the Pirates moving McCutchen to the two spot -- as Stark points out, batting McCutchen second gets him a few extra plate appearances, and enables the Bucs to take advantage of his very high on-base percentage. It also avoids the dreaded first-inning scenario where the first two batters are retired and then Cutch, batting third, comes up with two out and no one on.

-P- Austin Meadows had surgery to fix his orbital fracture (which he sustained earlier this month while playing catch). He should return in six to eight weeks. It's unfortunate that Meadows will lose a month or so of development, but at least this isn't the sort of injury that portends future problems for him.

-P- In case you missed it, the Cardinals signed Ruben Tejada to be their shortstop until Jhonny Peralta returns. Tejada obviously isn't Peralta's equal, and the Mets released him for a reason, but his youth and on-base ability give the Cardinals a bit of upside at the position they didn't have yesterday. They were lucky to be able to sign a free agent this good at this point in the year, actually.

-P- I wrote about the Mariners' offseason today for MLBTR. Basically, they made one dubious trade but otherwise tried to build a baseball team instead of a bunch of mismatched and defensively-challenged sluggers, and they're better for it.